It's been an interesting couple of months here at Laser Dog HQ. We knew this time was coming, looming over us like an ever-growing shadow shadow. It's a pressure most business owners feel at some point.

If you watched my talk last month, you'll know that after our latest game was released, we spent six months working on two different games. Neither of these games met our expectations, despite reworking control methods, changing graphic styles, trying different music, etc.

It might not sound like a big deal to say "we produced a couple of games, but they didn't really work out so we moved on to another idea". The truth is though, we threw away 6 months of work because it wasn't quite good enough. Not only is it quite painful to see all that effort, the late nights, the stress and worry just "disappear" into game development limbo, it's also a massive waste of money.

A suitable analogy would be someone who produces a physical product to throw away the entirety of half a year’s produce and then try to continue the business.

So, the looming shadow I mentioned earlier? That's us needing to paint over the Laser Dog logo on our office wall and move out. It's us packing up and finding different jobs.

Why am I writing about this? Mostly because I want to have a little rant, but also because it explains why we took a massive risk to take a break from working on our latest game to add a substantial update to an older game.

The change of plan

We're full steam ahead working on Ava Airborne and realise that the game is going to take a few more months to deliver. There's no way around it. If we finished it quickly, it wouldn't be nearly as good as we'd like it to be.

Pretty much all of our games have been released right at the point were our money has ran out. We maybe had one or two months' worth left when we pressed "submit". It's always been that way, and to be honest, that's pretty great encouragement to get a game finished.

We factored this in for Ava, but as I said, it's taking longer. We need to find a few more months from somewhere. We need a new short project that we can work on, that we'd actually want to play ourselves and hopefully people will buy into, giving us that extra time we need.

Starting a brand new game is out of the question - it’s just far too big of a project! We could, however, add value for players to one of our existing games. It'd have to be something we'd be proud of though, not a quick change just for the sake of it. Something we want to make and want to play.

The plan

Working on older games just isn't as fun as working on new games. We were reluctant to work on PKTBALL initially, as it's already out there and we love it! What more could we add to it?

I spent a long time trying to get an online multiplayer system working in the past, but the game was just far too fast to keep up. So that was out of the question.

Then we had an idea for a new way of playing PKTBALL! One that really excited us, and more importantly, we wanted to play it!

This new way of playing would be like making a new game, just contained within an older game!

"Think Tekken/Street fighter crossed with PKTBALL"

The initial prototype for PKTBALL was a lot faster than the released version. It was also a lot more difficult. We tweaked the game over and over again to make it feel casual at the start, and ramp up to become more challenging.

If we made a new mode, we could make it how we'd like to play it. Really challenging from the start. The way the first prototype played when we were sitting in that coffee shop in Leeds all that time ago.

Protour mode

Protour mode is more intense version of PKTBALL, with 6 rounds of battling until you reach the top of the ladder and take the trophy.

It was important to us that this new game mode would feel different to the normal mode. A player should be able to recognise a big shift in theme as soon as this mode opens.

I first started working on the soundtrack for the new mode. I recently came across an awesome VHS plugin that I was dying to use. I had a lot of fun writing this track!

PKTBALL features a lot of 80s sounding synths and drums, so I went with similar instrumentation, but made it feel a lot more serious and dark.

Once the music was written, we soon realised that PKTBALL's sound effects were far too light and happy sounding. We replaced most sound effects with new ones, exclusive to PROTOUR mode.

Replacing the ball bouncing sound had an immediate effect on the feel of the game. The ball would normally sound rubbery and bouncy, in protour mode it’s metal on metal, clunky and loud.

As Simon voiced the game announcer in the original PKTBALL mode, I was more than happy to lend my voice to protour mode! I actually lost my voice by the end of it, but it was a lot of fun! Pitch shifted down 8 semitones and with a layer of distortion, the announcer sounds quite menacing.

Gameplay changes

The original mode in PKTBALL is an endless high score chaser. You score points every time you manage to return the ball.

Protour mode starts with a player each end of the pitch. Each player wears a helmet that electrocutes them if they concede a goal. A player has 5 "lives", once you've been electrocuted 5 times, you're out (dead!).

We stripped out the walls from the edge of the pitch so there's a lot more room to play. This works great with the increased speed!

With this increased play area, we upped the capabilities of the AI opponents. They are smarter and faster!

Even though we've given the player more space to play in, we wanted the environment to feel like you're boxed in. To do this, we added some pseudo 3D walls and some ceiling lights that reflect on the court. This helps show the room's scale.

We finished it!

Not only did we manage to finish Protour mode in record time, we absolutely love it. It adds a whole new way to play a game we love. Protour mode more really challenges us too!

Protour mode is available right now on iOS, with an Android build coming later.

We're both really proud of the end result. We really hope people are able to play it to the end. We put a lot of effort into the last boss and we're worried no one will see it!!

We've both had a very busy year here at Laser Dog HQ. We released PKTBALL (iOS/Android), HoPiKo (XboxOne/PS4), discovered the wonders of Spelunky (OMG WHAT A GAME) and most recently, I (Rob) became a dad a matter of days ago. I think I just wanted an excuse to write that down! (I'm actually writing this post by my wife's hospital bed as they both sleep peacefully) ❤️❤️❤️

HoPiKo on Xbox One

Both PKTBALL and HoPiKo were really full-on projects. They took a long time to finish and we were kinda working against the clock the entire time to make sure we could keep the business running. While both projects were a lot of fun, we've both been really eager to work on a small/side project.

During the submission process for HoPiKo on console (quite a long process), we decided that we'd do a really small, fun and simple game and try finish it in a couple of weeks. This was really important for us as;

We used to often have "new game day Fridays". We basically had a game jam every week to see what new ideas we could come up with. This was really good fun and was also very re-energising! We hadn't had chance to do one of these all year.

We wanted to do a not-so-serious game after the long porting process of HoPiKo. While HoPiKo isn't 100% serious, we felt the need to just "go nuts" and make something a bit wacky :D

I was going to have a new addition to the family at any point and it'd be great to get a game published before I had some time off! This was a very new and fun kind of deadline!

Concept - Where it began

The gameplay idea behind Don't Grind is very simple. It's basically "keep-em-ups" but with buzz saws, lasers and rockets. We also threw in anthropomorphised characters with fear in their eyes and lot's of cartoon gore.

We knew right from the first prototype that we wanted gore and screaming in the game, but found it very important to make it funny rather than horrifying. We made sure that the "blood" was mostly not red coloured (it's only red if the object is red itself), and that there are no real-life animals involved. All of the characters are regular objects with a face. And from bananas to slices of bread, all the characters can be pulverised in a comedic way, not a gruesome way! Well, it's kinda gruesome when their eyes pop out of their head and splatter on the screen.

Early Development - No need to prototype

With most of our games, our initial prototypes are made with simple shapes to get the gameplay working as soon as possible. With Don't Grind, the concept was so simple that we decided to set the project up properly right away. So we created the spritesheets and started building the scene as we worked on the gameplay.

Characters - Injecting life into inanimate objects

It's important with a game like Don't Grind to feel connected with what is going on. We really wanted to bring the characters to life but avoid the whole "grinding up cute cats and dogs", so we chose to use inanimate objects. There have been thousands of games where you put animals in blenders and stuff since way back in the early days of flash, and we didn't want to make one of those.

To bring life to the characters ("Grindables" from here onwards), we firstly gave them a dynamic face. To portray emotions (well, just "fear" really) we gave them eyebrows, shaking eyes and a mouth with various expressions.

The Grindable will detect which danger is closest and focus on it. The eyes will look towards the nearest blade for example. The closer the object, the more the eyes grow and shake. The angle of the eyebrows also increase the closer they get. This is demonstrated in the below dev-build used to test the facial expressions.

Separating the face into individual components, rather than using sprite based animations gave us the freedom to have many different face types and a wide range of movement, with a very small footprint in texture memory.

Design - Look and feel

Simon's art board for Don't Grind

I think Simon has created a really great look for Don't Grind. It's fun, bright and simple. The colour scheme during gameplay is based on the current time of day, so there's always a bit of variation. Progress is highlighted by sky colour changes and keen eyes might even spot plane vapour trails travelling across the sky. These are a VERY (Simon!) subtle suggestion of how long the player has been playing.

Don't Grind's time-based colour schemes

Working sprite collection

Sound - Recording the Grindable's voices

We recorded the voices ourselves in our office with the help of some of our friends and family. It's possibly the funniest time we've had recording vocals. It was completely ridiciculous and deafeningly loud! We then added pitch effects to make the characters feel smaller.

Below is a sample of the "raw" vocals we recorded, before any effects are added.

Music - Write the theme tune, sing the theme tune

During the initial stages of development, we had the Wii Shop music on repeat. This really helped us feel the tone of the game, and only drove us slightly crazy.

Whilst I was walking to the shop one day, I made up a silly song in my head that I immediately recorded on my phone when I got back to the house and sent it straight to Simon. It was such a stupid little song and my voice is so terrible, that it felt like it could work really well. This is the actual recording I sent to Simon, recorded on my phone:

We quickly agreed that this could be our first game with a theme tune. Excited, I rerecorded/sequenced the instrumentation in Logic Pro X, adding strings, drums and glockenspiels. It's important to note that I DO NOT SING. To record the vocals, I bought a 6 pack of beer, took my vocal mic home and locked myself in a room, got a little drunk and "sang". Auto tune may have been used a bit ;) The entire recording ended up being shifted up a step and sped up by 10bpm. This was to just make it feel more lively.

And, because I cannot resist making chiptunes, I made a 8bit version that plays every now and again instead of the "standard" version.

Pricing - Cleanium strikes back

We wanted to make Don't Grind's pricing, like the gameplay, as simple as possible. We believe we've done the smallest and cleanest possible implementation of "Freemium" or "Cleanium". The game is entirely free to play, but adverts are shown every now and then during non-gameplay critical moments. The adverts can be removed by a single in-app purchase. We think this is a fair way of monetising a mobile game of this kind, as the whole game is there to play. If you want to support us (or hate adverts), you can purchase the IAP and the game is yours forever.

The Grindables are unlocked by playing the game and beating certain targets and challenges. There are also some "special" Grindables that can be unlocked in secret ways that we reveal over time. Some of these have already been discovered in the beta version! Gotta catch 'em all!

Grindables - Series 1

Sequences - Carefully designed death traps

I created a basic system for creating "sequences" and rating them in terms of difficulty. This could be a single saw coming out of the screen, or several rockets shooting at the player. Simon made hundreds of these sequences, and got really creative with them. He noted that he took inspiration from Futurama's "lower horn remover":

The difficulty system is totally dynamic for each game. The better you are playing in that particular game, the harder the game will be, but in turn, the more points will be available for you to pick up. It balances out so that new players and experienced players should have the same level of challenge, tailored to their ability. This way, you can still pass your phone to a friend that's never played it before, and they will have a fair experience based on their own gameplay.

Simon's sketches while planning gameplay sequences

Release - By the skin of our teeth

We met our target of making the full game in just a couple of weeks. We finished entirely, and then as all of our projects go, we polished it for a further two months. Even though the whole development took around 3 months, we still think of it as our two week game 😁

We're very proud of the end result. It's a fully mobile feeling "pick up and play" short burst of wackiness. It's also the exact game we imagined when we started the project. That doesn't happen often with us! Games normally morph into something quite different.

We're also pleased and amazed that we made our deadline. Infact, my daughter was born only two days after we finished the game. Perfect timing!!

Don't Grind will be available on the 24th of November on the Appstore and Google Play store.

What about the PKTBALL update?!?!

We know, we know! We've actually been working on an exciting update to PKTBALL alongside Don't Grind. We did plan to release Don't Grind and the PKTBALL update at the same time; Unfortunately the update has been taking longer than we expected. We'll keep working on the update when we can, and we'll get it out ASAP. It'll be worth it, we promise :)